Stella means star ... and she is. One of many who just couldn't keep from dancing.
Not all that long ago, Irish newcomers to the Delaware Valley found a pretty fair treatment, if not a cure, for homesickness in the dances at the old VFW on 69th Street.
Rosemarie Timoney, one of the local legends of Irish dance, recalls working in Chestnut Hill in those days. She used to hop on a bus that would take her from Bethlehem Pike down to Cheltenham Avenue, and from there, she’d join her girlfriends on the E bus for the last leg of the trip down to Upper Darby.
There, she and her pals would dance the sets—Shoe the Donkey, the Siege of Ennis, the Philadelphia set (of course), and more.
A few of the folks who remember the dance hall days all too well—including Rosemarie, Ed Reavy Jr., Tommy Moffit and Kevin McGillian—were on hand over the weekend as the Philadelphia Ceili Group held its annual festival of Irish music and dance at the Philadelphia Irish Center. One very special feature of that three-day event was a Saturday afternoon dance to commemorate those days down on 69th Street. With Rosemarie herding the newbies, Tommy calling the tunes, Kevin playing accordion and Ed dancing up a storm, it felt like nothing had really changed at all. The dance hall was different, but the dance goes on.
It all felt like a great reunion party. But, then, the Ceili Festival always seems to reunite people who sometimes manage to see each other two or three times a week, as well as people who maybe haven’t been inside the Irish Center for years. Everyone just picks up where they left off, and they all throw themselves into hours and hours of great music—this year including a concert by the great New York fiddler Tony DeMarco—as well as endless hours of floor-shaking dancing. (You can hear the shoe-pounding pretty well in the parking garage under the ballroom.) The bar does a pretty fair business, and traditional music sessions go on and on into the night.
We’ve tried to capture some of the best moments in pictures.
